IM and friends jointly hosed

I have friends who show offline. If I send an IM, I don't get the automatic reply saying the message will be delivered later. They are actually online because when I send them an IM, I immediately get the blue popup window notice that they are online. But I am not receiving their replies in real time. And at this point, I don't even know whether they are getting my IMs.

Any suggestions about what I might do?

This isn't the first time this has happened. You'd think when a major update (I think it was 1.14) breaks something as basic as the friends list and the friends list online that it took days to fix last time that Linden Labs would make sure that a new update doesn't cause the exact same thing to happen again. I guess they don't bother to really test their software before releasing it to the grid. It is very frustrating.

For now I don't think there is really anything you can do but wait for LL to fix it. If you want to see if someone is online you should be able to tell by looking at their profile. At least for me IM's that I have sent have gone through even when users are not showing as online in the friends list.